Blog Post

Earlier this year, we reported on the findings of the Cisco Visual Networking Index as it relates to the expected data usage between the periods of 2015 and 2020 in Africa and the Middle East. The latest State of the Internet report by Akamai shows us just how the adoption of broadband has increased in South Africa thus far.

According to the report, the 4Mbps broadband adoption has increased to 42%, based on data gathered by the company’s Intelligent Platform that provides insight into global connectivity and internet metrics. This shows an increase of 55% in the quarter-on-quarter changes from 2015 Q3 to 2016 Q1 and a year-on-year change of 118%.

South Africa still finds itself falling behind in Africa and the Middle East with 96% of Israel’s internet users connecting at 4Mbps or higher, Turkey at 87% and Kenya at 63%. Despite, our rather average growth on the continent and in the region, the growth is still good news for South Africa as it’s largest internet providers continue to roll out broadband access such as LTE and FTTH, and with the decrease in prices, we can only imagine that the results from the next quarter will show an even greater adoption.